Mentally Ill Executions"An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth" is the philosophy many people use when it comes to the punishment of criminals. The death penalty has been debated for many years as it has come into and then fallen out of favor for the American public. Today the death penalty by lethal injection has been put on hold on a couple of states. The legality of the "cruel and unusual punishment" is being heatedly debated. The death penalty is especially volatile when it comes to the mentally ill. When a mentally ill person commits a crime worthy of the death penalty the state and those involved with the case often face a moral and ethical dilemma. If the person is not capable of understanding why they are being executed or what the death penalty means to them, there is a legal, ethical and moral question about the fairness of that execution. The states' answer has been to medicate the mentally ill prisoner with anti-psychotic drugs so that they become capable of mentally understanding why they are going to be executed. "There is virtually no psychiatric diagnosis that always renders a defendant incompetent or unable to be held responsible for his or her acts (Reid, 1998)." The question then becomes how humane is it to bring them out of their mental illness, get them well enough and then kill them when they are able to finally understand what is happening to them? It is the courts responsibility that the defendant is capable of helping his own defense and that he fully understands his charges and his sentence. Forcing death row inmates to take medication to be sane enough to execute, is a legal, moral and ethical debate that will continue for a long time. "In 1986, the United States Supreme Court decided Ford v. Wainwright, holding that the execution of the mentally incompetent violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. A prisoner cannot be executed unless sufficiently competent to understand the nature and reasons for his punishment. This year, in a six-to-five decision and the first ruling of its kind, the closely divided United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held, in Singleton v. Norris, that a mentally ill prisoner may be involuntarily medicated with antipsychotic drugs to restore his competency for execution (477 U.S. 399, 1986)." "The decision raises acute ethical dilemmas for criminal law and for medical and mental-health professionals who provide treatment for the condemned. Should medical professionals provide necessary mental-health treatment to a condemned prisoner when restoration of competency will likely result in his execution? Does doing so shift their role from that of "healer" to accomplices in the administration of the death penalty (Redding, Hensl 2004)?" The medical field and the judicial system clash with ethics on this debate. The moral and ethical obligation in the medical profession is to make sure that a patient is being treated for his symptoms in a proper manner and is receiving the proper medication for those symptoms. The judicial systems must make sure that the defendant is acutely aware and has full knowledge of his sentencing, which in this case means they must be fully aware of why they are to be executed. In this particular case, the death row inmate was a man who murdered and committed aggravated robbery. While in prison his mental health began to worsen and he was diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia. His illness made him suffer from paranoia, delusions and other problems that are common to those with this disorder. "Singleton believed, for example, that his thoughts were being stolen and that demons filled his cell, and in his hallucinations, his food turned to worms and his cigarettes to bones. He lost considerable weight, spoke in odd languages, and sometimes refused to wear clothing. There were times when he believed he had already been executed (Stone, 2004)." In 1997, the prison began to...

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The state of Texas accounts for approximately two thirds of all executions in the United States since 1977, and of those executions, Texas is also considered to be ranked in the top for executions of mentally impaired prisoners. The state of Texas has killed at least twenty-four mentally retarded or mentally...

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According to FindLaw.com, the statute that Ohio uses for the insanity defense is the M’Naghten Rule (Reuters, 2014). The M’Naghten rule, which was introduced in 1843, came about because of a mentallyill person named Daniel M’Naghten. According to our textbook, Wrightman’s Psychology and the Legal System, M’Naghten had paranoid delusions. He believed that the Prime Minister, Robert Peel, was aligned with the Tory Party in a conspiracy against him. He tried to run, but when that didn’t do the trick, he returned and stalked the Prime Minister. He later shot a man, who he believed to be the Prime Minister, but he actually killed the private security of the British Prime Minister. He was charged with murder, but after a couple of days of medical experts testifying, he...

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June 11, 2013
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Professor: Michael Bryant
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...A
A Better Life For The MentallyIll
John Henry Ruffin II
Devry University
A Better Life for the MentallyIllMentallyill individuals in America are forced to endure numerous forms of abuse and do not receive the proper care they require and deserve. In the past, the “insane” members of society have been treated horribly by the people that live within their communities. Today, There are many different treatment options available to the mentallyill individuals that require help to live in today’s society. Although there are plenty of treatment options, the individuals still need to have the ability to make choices pertaining to the care that they receive and the type of medical/mental treatments they are given. The facilities and group-homes that house these individuals are not always the safest place for them and should be monitored closer by the families and government. Many changes could be and need to be made to make the American system of mental health treatments better and safer for the individuals receiving services. The type of treatment, both the way the individual is cared for and the types of services he/she receive, needs to be re-evaluated due to the lack of quality caregivers, the ineffectiveness of treatment plans, and the way individuals are abused and neglected by staff members.
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...are exempt from execution. The Supreme Court held in Ford v. Wainwright (477 U.S. 399 (1986)) that executing the insane is unconstitutional. However, if an inmate's mental competency has been restored, he or she can then be executed. Inmates who are intellectually disabled (mentally retarded) also cannot be executed. Inmates who are mentallyill, but not insane, have no such exemption.
Being in the mental health field for over ten years and working in state hospitals and the prison system with people who have committed some of the worlds hanious crimes known to man. Currently I work with mentallyill inmates who are actively homicidal or suicidal due to them hearing voices, seeing things or just because of depression and many other different symptoms related to mental illness. Also being a psychiatric nurse I find that it would be unethical for me to agree with killing the individuals who I am trying to keep from killing themselves. To learn that the person who is being accused is mentallyill and based on the definition of what a mental illness is should they be put to death? So should the father in the above story be sentenced to death for killing his two children even though there is documentation that he had been suffering from a mental illness for many years and under the care of a Psychiatrist.
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...﻿Maria Cartaya
Professor Tyberg
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March 18, 2014
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...Deinstitutionalization of the MentallyIll
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